


dive in deep

by alaseux



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: ASMR, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Swimming, Let Andrew Emote 2k18, M/M, OH AND there r some ocs in here bc they Had To Be but they're like...... irrelevant lol, andrew dives bc damn his thighs could kill a man !!!!, i love swimming and i love my boys, neil swims, ps they live in oakland, this is just SOFT GUYS, warning: gratuitous use of high school tropes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-07-01 18:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15779574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alaseux/pseuds/alaseux
Summary: Neil, Andrew knew, did not care about anything except swimming.(in which Neil and Andrew spend most of their time in their high school pool)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HEY i'm zoe i've been swimming competitively since i was three i love these boys and i love chlorine so i figured why not write a fuckin fic about it lmao !!!!! plus i'm a sophomore this yr so like......... this is how i'm coping with that. also i love my swim/dive team more than anything so this is essentially a love letter to them  
> a few lil notes before we start:  
> -in this, neil’s mother died when he was 15, instead of like. 17 or whatever it is in canon  
> -higgins hasn't found aaron yet, so andrew hasn't gone to juvie, and he doesn’t know about his family. he’s still in the system as andrew doe. also heads up this is set before andrew started living with the spears  
> -this is a soft fic bc angst makes me rly sad!!!! so don't expect any Bad Stuff except like.... scar mentions and maybe some panic attacks. also nightmares but like lowkey  
> -i'm posting this as i write it because i'm super excited about showing it to y'all plus planning is for losers so updates won't be regular btw lol  
> -im hella aware that most of y'all aren't swimmers/divers so i tried my best to explain the terminology while writing,,,, also i'm not a diver so the diver info in this is just pulled from my friendship w my fellow divers fhdjskfhd sorry @ any divers out there hmu if u have opinions on that aspect of the fic bc i sure don't !!!!

Neil was fairly sure that his chemistry teacher wasn’t speaking English. She’d been monologuing for ten minutes, prattling on about something called electrolysis, and Neil was thoroughly exhausted of the topic by now, so he stared out the window, gazing at the bay and counting down the minutes until practice started. Swim was his last period, and it was barely nine in the morning, so he had a while to go.

It was October, midterms were quickly approaching, and since this was Neil’s sophomore year of high school, studying was essentially mandatory if he didn’t want to fail all of his classes. He should probably be paying attention to this lecture.

Neil didn’t want to pay attention to this lecture. 

Stress was sinking into his skin like ink he couldn’t figure out to scrub off, and it’d had him on edge all week; he hadn’t slept well last night, and a strange, hollow exhaustion was hovering over his head. Unfortunately for Neil, sleep wasn’t exactly something he could just decide to do. It was a stray cat that came and went as it pleased, and Neil wasn’t sure how to invite it in for good. And not only was Neil a chronic insomniac, he also had regular nightmares that prevented the precious little sleep he got from being legitimate  _ rest.  _ So thanks to that triple threat of terribleness—stress, insomnia, nightmares—he really wasn’t functioning as a normal human person right now.

Maybe if the pool was open at lunchtime, Neil would eat there today. The smell of chlorine always calmed him down, and sometimes he would study there after school while sitting on one of the blocks, or on the diving board. His coach, Ben Robinson, was friends with Neil’s FBI agent caretaker, Jen, and thus was good at ignoring Neil’s presence in or beside the pool when Neil wasn’t technically supposed to be there. Perhaps he’d look the other way if Neil took a nap in the locker room. The chlorine was good for Neil, in a weird, roundabout, chemical-ish way, and it was always able to ease him into sleep, so—yeah. Neil would eat lunch at the pool and then take a power nap so he wouldn’t pass out in his afternoon classes.

He made it through the rest of the morning by tripping from one class to another, looking forward to his upcoming nap. Finally, the bell for second lunch rang, and Neil grabbed his plastic sack from his locker before sneaking away from the cafeteria and towards the pool, which was located in a building close to the edge of campus.

Neil let himself in through the (thankfully) unlocked front door, bypassed the sign-in sheet, as always, and slipped into the metal bleachers, where he sat on the top row and placed his sack lunch beside him.

The building housing their school pool was entirely glass, and light danced into the chlorinated water from all directions, making it look warm and inviting. Neil knew better, though—the unnaturally bright blue water was freezing on good days and almost inhabitable on bad ones, and he knew the frigid shock of jumping in and letting the cold flood his senses more intimately than just about anything. (It wasn’t necessarily a  _ bad _ feeling, though. Just a jolting one.)

The divers were practicing, and Neil tracked their movements as he ate his sandwich. His gaze landed on Lucas Santos, a double threat: he swam  _ and _ dove, and was stellar at both. Lucas was a senior in Neil’s statistics class, and happened to be the only diver Neil was friends with, even though swim and dive practiced together every afternoon and sometimes in the mornings. He was currently sprawled out in the hot tub beside a curly-haired girl, attempting to pour water on her head using a spatula and other assorted kitchenware floating around the steaming water. The Oakland High divers were notoriously lazy, but also incredibly good, so according to Lucas, they were allowed to slack off.

The Oakland Falcons swim and dive team had a meet tomorrow, and Neil was so, so,  _ so _ fucking excited. He loved meet days more than anything, probably, and Jen told him she was going to come this time, which meant Robinson would be paying extra attention to him. Good. This was Neil’s first year on the team, and his third meet swimming for the Foxes, which meant he needed to get on Robinson’s good side as soon as possible so he could join the relay team. Not  _ a _ relay team, because the Falcons had, like, six adequate ones—no, Neil needed to join  _ the  _ relay team. The only one that mattered. The one for the 200 IM that had been winning championships since its formation twenty years back, and had been getting faster annually with the routine induction of the four best speciality swimmers of the whole team.

So Neil’s goal for the season was to be recruited to swim breaststroke in the famous Oakland Falcons 200 IM relay for next year. He was busting his ass to get there, too; he spent every free moment he had in the pool or at the gym or on the track, putting in miles of laps and hours of cardio so maybe one day he’d be able to swim with the Falcons’ state-renowned relay team. 

It was a bizarre feeling, to want something as mundane as a good place on a swim team, and to be completely honest, he adored it.

When his mother had died near San Francisco, Neil had given up on staying hidden from the authorities. After burying her charred bones in the sand, he’d found the closest police station, demanded to talk to an FBI agent, and spilled everything he knew about the Wesninski crime ring. Neil hadn’t talked about the Hatfords or any of his mother’s contacts, claiming his mother wouldn’t let him know anything about them. Over the course of two days, he told the agents everything about Nathan and his lackeys that he could remember, and they told him things too—apparently, his father was controlled by the Moriyamas, who he had once had a brush with at Edgar Allan, but Neil was so shaken by all the information he was admitting that he hadn’t even processed the information until about a week later. Finally, after the whole thing was done, he’d been given a new name and identity, but had firmly refused to change his appearance from Nathaniel’s—it felt like a personal challenge, a hearty  _ fuck you  _ to his father, who couldn’t touch him here in sunny Oakland, California. So now he was Neil Abram Josten, an auburn-haired, blue-eyed fifteen-year-old who had been in the system for seven years and was currently living with a “foster mother.” This was Jen, a kind, yet tough-as-nails FBI agent who gave him a phone and a laptop and promised to let him drive her long-dead husband’s car when Neil felt like it again. (Even though it had been months since his mother’s death, he could still barely get in a car without smelling smoke and blood.) Lately, Jen had been talking about making Neil go to therapy, but he still liked her; she understood his trauma more than an actual foster parent would, and it felt strangely good.

And now he was sitting here, on a set of metal bleachers beside the Oakland High pool, watching divers mess around and do everything except actually dive. He wondered how his mother would look at him if she saw how he exposed his scars to his fellow swimmers like he didn’t give a fuck about his ruined skin, how he got in a pool on the daily and loved it, how ever since he made the team, he has been swimming and swimming and  _ winning _ . But his mother was dead and somehow Neil wasn’t, so goddammit, he was going to ignore her ghost and just fucking swim because he had the scars to prove that life was too short not to do what made him feel alive.

When a short blond diver flipped him off from across the pool. Neil noticed, too late, that he’d accidentally been staring at him. Neil blinked, recalibrated to his surroundings, and sucked in a breath when he saw a pair of black armbands and he realized it was Andrew Doe.  _ Stay away from that kid,  _ Lucas’s voice mumbled helpfully in the back of his head.  _ He’s fucking terrifying. I know he’s an amazing diver, or whatever, but just, like, stay away, man. He was in my American Lit class sophomore year and I’ve heard he’s been suspended, like, four times. _

Having finished his sandwich, Neil pulled out an apple and took a bite as he watched Andrew meander down the diving board, take a step out into thin air, and fall straight into the water, making no effort to actually attempt a dive. He saw Coach Robinson groan into his clipboard at the kid’s actions, but he didn’t reprimand Andrew; he just stood there, looking utterly exhausted with him. Since Andrew was probably the best high school diver in all of California, Neil supposed that as long as he kept winning events, Andrew was allowed to fuck around at practice.

Neil climbed down the bleachers, tossed the paper bag in a trash can, and wandered into the boys’ locker rooms to take a quick nap.

Later that day, practice finally rolled around, and as always, Neil was the first person dressed and on deck. Coach was writing something on the board and Neil was fiddling with the double strap of his goggles when Lucas walked up to him; the purple shammy in his hand told Neil his friend was diving today instead of swimming.

“Hey, man,” Lucas said, eyes skimming over Neil’s scars even though he saw them just about every day. “Saw you at dive today, at lunch. What were you doing?”

“I took a nap in the locker room,” admitted Neil. “Midterms are stressing me out and sleep hasn’t been on my side lately.”

“Dude, same,” groaned Lucas, rubbing his free hand over his eternally-smooth face. Every swimmer and diver shaved. It wasn’t even an question, really—they did everything to remain as streamlined as possible. “God, I fuckin’ hate high school.”

Neil nodded his agreement, and watched a few of the divers warm up, eyes catching on Andrew Doe again, who was stretching beside the diving board. Andrew was remarkably flexible, bending in half with ease while laying on a blue yoga mat, wrapping his hands around his feet and exhaling to sink deeper into the stretch.

“Hey, what’s Andrew’s problem dive?” Neil asked Lucas. 

Every diver had a particular dive that messed with their head and took them longer to master, and all of the divers knew their teammates’ problem dives so they could help each other get the hang of them faster. Lucas’s was a reverse, and Neil had found himself talking Lucas up on the board to do it many times.

“Front full twist,” said Lucas absently. “He can’t get the arms right.”

Andrew, who had finished stretching, plunged his eternally-banded forearms into the hot tub and rubbed some of the water on his muscular chest and shoulders to warm up. He climbed up onto the diving board, walked to the edge, and rubbed his black shammy over his legs before throwing it down to the dry land beside the board. (For some reason, divers had a thing for aggressively throwing their shammies before diving. Neil had never understood it. Lucas told him not to try, because according to him, it was an animalistic tendency that had been embedded in all divers since birth.)

After checking the water to make sure no one was in his way, looking bored as usual, Andrew turned on the board so his back was towards the pool. He hopped on the board once, twice, and then he was flying, bending effortlessly into a pike and flipping in midair. He came out of the pike a heartbeat later, locked his arms into a streamline above his head, and slid headfirst into the water below with a tiny splash.

“What kind was that?” Neil asked, wonder laced into his voice like kerosene before a flame.

“Inward,” answered Lucas, looking just as awed. “One and a half pike. That motherfucker. I’ve never even seen him  _ practice _ that.”

Neil kept staring at Andrew, who was currently climbing out of the water with the type of grace that every chlorinated athlete possessed, until Lucas snapped his fingers in front of Neil’s face to discuss transportation for the next meet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the dive team is based on our school's dive team btw!!! once one of my diver friends brought some kitchen utensils from his own goddamn kitchen and left them in the hot tub for approximately four months bc he liked to slap them against ppl's bare skin to assess the weird red marks they made. in other news, divers are the weirdest fucking people i have ever met,  
> anyway thank u for reading!!! pls leave me a comment/kudos!!! it Motivates me :))  
> p.s. i study while sitting on the diving board all the time. my coach has given up on kicking me out of the pool bc she's come to terms with the fact that chlorine is currently the only stress reliever i have. this is how i passed finals last year


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Andrew is exhausted with himself. Also Snapchat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i would give my life for these boys

Falling into bed close to midnight that night, Andrew was annoyed to find that his thighs were aching, thanks to his unusually-dedicated effort at dive practice that afternoon. He’d done more fucking pikes in two hours than he usually did in two weeks, purely because he’d found that dumb kid Neil’s eyes glued to him and thus decided to prove his worth on the team for once. But Andrew wasn’t showing off, or anything—he was just making sure the little redhead knew his place. Yeah. That was it.

(Of course, Andrew had never actually  _ talked _ to Neil, because real-life Neil was probably a pale imitation of the one he’d dreamt up in his head on late nights when he couldn’t fall asleep, but he knew just about all the gossip that was flickering through the school about the sophomore.) 

Andrew had seen Neil for the first time at swim tryouts, small and scarred and fast as hell, tearing through the water like a knife through butter. Or like—like a knife through flesh, or something equally intimidating. Andrew’s similes weren’t exactly up to par right now, and it wasn’t even his fault, since he’d had to deal with bright, intelligent blue eyes resting on him for the majority of a practice he usually fucked around in.

_ Neil. _

There was an unlimited amount of rumors on the kid. So far, Andrew had managed to piece together a bit of reliable information: Neil Josten was in tenth grade, Neil Josten was in the foster system, Neil Josten treated the pool like a sanctuary, like chlorine was a god he chose, every time, to worship. Andrew had never thought of the water as something to adore; diving was just something he  _ did, _ something mildly interesting to fill up the time, but Neil was steadfastly reverent with every start, every stroke, every turn and kick and streamline. In Andrew’s humble opinion, loving the pool that much was a weird fucking concept (but to be honest, it wasn’t as weird as Neil’s scars, extensive in their violence and significant in their brutality—Andrew knew the cruelty of foster care well, but clearly not as well as scarred-up Neil, since Andrew was currently residing in the large guest bedroom of a kind, divorced gynecologist who had a golden retriever named Daisy and the biggest kitchen Andrew had ever seen). 

Neil, Andrew knew, did not care about anything except swimming. This is what every girl who had hit on him said; this is what Lucas Santos, his best friend (?), said; this is what Coach Robinson, sounding grateful for someone with actual respect for the sport, said. Which meant that Andrew, with his black clothes and blacker reputation, really had no business whatsoever crushing on him. Especially considering the fact that they’d never actually  _ had a conversation. _

And yet here Andrew was, scrolling through Instagram for the third time in as many hours, attempting to find the kid’s account.

After almost seriously considering messaging Lucas and asking for Neil’s fucking  _ Facebook, _ (as if anyone even had that anymore,) Andrew threw his phone across the room, disgusted with himself. This was a futile effort, he knew, so he switched off his lamp, closed his eyes, and waited to slip into sleep.

_ Ding!  _ chimed his phone a minute later from where it had landed in a beanbag in the corner, and Andrew sat upright. He glared at the thing, because for once he had been  _ so close  _ to falling asleep quickly, and it had disturbed that precious, vital moment where he’d almost made it. But since his foster mom was already asleep, and only Coach or a few select teammates ever texted him, usually about changes in practice or meet times, he rolled out of bed and went to pick it up.

_ neil j has added you on Snapchat! _

Andrew’s breath stuttered against his will. There were other Neil Js out there, he tried to convince himself. This definitely wasn’t the swimmer Neil, because swimmer Neil most likely didn’t care about social media, and besides, how would he have gotten Andrew’s Snapchat?

And yet Andrew’s rebellious fingers clicked the  _ add back  _ button and promptly went to view Neil’s story, which had been posted two minutes ago.

Sure enough, it was swimmer Neil. Swimmer Neil, hanging out in what looked like a cove in the bay, videoing Lucas jumping off a cliff into the water and then turning the camera back on himself to give a grin and a thumbs up. Part of Andrew was angry at Lucas for taking Neil out that late, and part of him was grateful because it brought about the existence of this video, with a soaked Neil smiling in the moonlight.

_ In the goddamn moonlight. _ Ugh. Andrew really hated himself. But he climbed back into bed and watched the video another four times before falling asleep anyway.

The next morning dawned annoyingly bright and early, and Andrew’s alarm clock blared itself into a rage next to his ear. He slammed his hand down hard on the plastic to turn it off and rolled out of bed, right onto the ground, groaning when his knee banged against the bedside table in his graceful descent. Andrew, tangled in sheets and blankets, blinked a few times to remember who he was, where he was, and what he was doing, and sighed when he realized it was six in the morning on a Saturday. He had a meet today, and he had to be at the school pool by seven for warmups. 

He fucking hated dive team, he thought, untwisting himself from the sheets and picking himself off the floor. Yawning, he went to the closet to sleepily shove his competition swimsuit, three towels, his favorite black shammy, and two hoodies labeled  _ Oakland Swim and Dive  _ in garish blue writing into his team bag. Andrew pulled on a loose pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, yanked on some mismatched socks and toed into his tennis shoes, and plugged his earbuds into his phone to settle back into bed for a few minutes and watch an ASMR video. 

It was weird how much Andrew liked them, if he was being completely honest. Ever since he’d discovered them in sophomore year, they’d become his pre-meet tradition—they calmed him down, pulled the anxiety out from under his skin without getting rid of the vital adrenaline that won him meets. They were his go-to stress reliever, and no one knew that he watched them, and no one  _ would _ know that he watched them because they were all his to enjoy, whether he was watching at three in the morning after a particularly vicious nightmare, or sitting on the bleachers of a crowded pool waiting to hop off a springboard a couple times. 

The girl on the screen tapped her fingernails against a glass of water and Andrew felt the stress being tugged from his shoulders; the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and a pleasant tingle ran down his spine.

A few minutes later, there was a knock at his door and he pulled out his headphones, feeling calm and collected, but energized. “Come in,” he called.

“Morning, Andrew!” Anna, his foster mother, poked her head in. She was on call today; her dark hair was tucked into a neat bun and she was fully dressed, looking wide awake. “Ready for your meet, bud?”

“Yeah,” he said, shrugging on his swim bag. He tucked his phone and earbuds into the pocket of his sweats and followed her downstairs, where she handed him two bottles of water and a bag of granola bars.

“Good luck today,” she said, grinning. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Wish I could be there to see you kick their asses, kiddo.”

Against his better judgement, he snorted, a small smile finding its way onto his lips as he tucked his new bounty into his bag. “Thanks, Anna.”

She rubbed Andrew’s hair affectionately, then pretended to shoo him out of the house, and he gave her a two-fingered salute before meandering outside to his car, a black Buick with an Oakland Swim and Dive sticker on the back windshield (Anna had stuck it on before presenting him with it for his sixteenth birthday). He slung his swim bag into the passenger seat, twisted on the ignition, and plugged his phone into the aux cord to play some music he’d started listening to about a week ago, thanks to the interference of his teammates. They were always blaring generic rap at the pool, and unfortunately, he’d started to like it, so here he was, driving to a meet with his fingers tapping against the steering wheel in time to the heavy beat of the bass.

Maybe he’d see Neil today, he thought absently, pulling into a parking spot and cutting off the engine. Maybe he’d  _ talk _ to Neil today.

He rolled his eyes at himself and headed inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "u have a pool kink" -taylor (tbh? she isn't wrong. i could wax poetic about chlorine for hours, so, like, relatable @ neil)  
> leave me kudos/a comment if u liked it!! thank u for reading :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Neil is stupid, and Andrew is smitten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> zoe start updating regularly instead of disappearing for a month straight challenge

Neil pushed himself out of the pool, standing up to tug off his cap and goggles. He’d taken warmups slow today, not wanting to burn out before the actual races started, and now he was finished until the meet started at eight.

He made his way over to his team’s section of the bleachers, setting his cap and goggles on his bag, yanking on a pair of sweatpants over his suit and pulling out an obnoxiously bright green towel to wrap around his shoulders. It was almost seven and the sun was just beginning to rise; the rosy fingers of dawn whispered their way across the sky and through the eastern wall of the glass building that housed the pool. The sunrise was always infinitely more beautiful when it danced across the water, in Neil’s humble opinion.

Mind meandering, Neil let his gaze wander over the sleepy-looking divers that were trickling in through the double doors. Swimmers were always the first ones there for warmups, as the divers were the last kids to compete and therefore didn’t need to be ready as early. Neil’s eyes caught on a short figure wearing a scowl and a pair of black armbands letting himself in the door.

Last night, Lucas had dragged Neil to the Curve, a hidden cove tucked into the San Franciscan beach. Since it was the end of October and they lived in fucking Oakland, the water had been freezing, but Lucas had built a bonfire on the sand afterwards and while Neil was warming up, he’d scrolled through his Snapchat to find that an “andrew.doe” was in his friend suggestions. Before he could think twice, he’d added him, and Andrew had added him back seconds later. Neil wasn’t sure what that meant, but at least Andrew hadn’t ignored his friend request—

“Yo, Neil,” Lucas said, sitting beside Neil, interrupting his thoughts. “What’s up, man?”

“Hey, Lucas,” replied Neil, pulling the towel a little tighter around himself to ward off the post-swim chill that was settling on his skin. “Have you warmed up yet?”

“Nah,” said Lucas. “I’m not swimming today, so Coach has me warming up with dive. I’m kinda stressin’ about it, to be honest. I haven’t been working dive as much as I should.”

“You’re going to do great,” Neil said, and he meant it. “You’re a really good diver.”

“Aw, thanks, dude!” Lucas went in for a high-five, which Neil returned easier than when he’d first become friends with Lucas. “You’re gonna blow them outta the water today.”

Neil grinned, a little cocky. “That’s the plan.”

Lucas snorted, rolled his eyes, pulled his arms over his head to stretch out his shoulders. “The fame monster’s got you already.”

Neil just laughed, running a hand through his hair and watching Andrew walk up the bleachers to settle in. Before he could think better of it, Neil stood and followed Andrew to the top corner.

“Uh,” Neil said, as Andrew set his bag down. “Hi? You’re Andrew, right?”

Andrew turned around to face him, arms crossed over his broad chest, looking bored out of his mind. “What do you want?”

Neil resisted the urge to wince. “Um, I’m Neil,” he said eloquently. “Josten? I, uh—I added you on Snapchat last night?”

“Was that a question?” Andrew didn’t seem impressed.

“Not a question,” said Neil quickly. “I just wanted to tell you that you’re a really good diver and, uh, good luck today. Out there. On the board, I mean.” This was, quite possibly, the worst moment of Neil’s entire life. He was on the verge of physically cringing at his own stupidity.

“Thanks,” Andrew said, not sounding thankful at all. 

“What’s your favorite dive?” Neil asked, desperate to redeem himself.

“None of them,” replied Andrew flatly. “I fucking hate dive.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Did you need something else?” asked Andrew, when it was clear that Neil had nothing else to say.

“Something else?  _ Oh! _ No, sorry, I’ll just be going now, I guess.” And Neil turned around and climbed down the bleachers, wishing he could fling himself into the pool and never get out again. He’d just wanted to make a friend, but clearly, that had been a dumb idea—

“Neil,” called Andrew.

“Yes?” Neil whirled around to face him.

“Good luck, too,” Andrew said, something intense flickering behind his eyes.

Neil felt a smile tugging at his lips. “Thank you,” he said, and made his way back to Lucas, who was currently gaping at him, mouth wide open.

“What the fuck?” said Lucas, eyes wide. “Neil, seriously, what the fuck?”

“Just making conversation,” Neil replied. “You know, as one does.”

“As one does,” repeated Lucas, dumbfounded. “Neil, he could probably  _ murder  _ you. He could stab the shit out of you, or, like, convince you to throw yourself off a bridge! You don’t need to deal with any more—”

“Any more what?” Neil cut in casually. “Severe scarring? Psychological fuckery? Glaringly obvious childhood trauma? Believe me, Lucas, I’m afraid of a lot of things, but I’m not afraid of Andrew Doe. Can I have one of your granola bars?”

Lucas stared at him for a second, then blinked. “Pecan crunch or cranberry pomegranate?”

“Cranberry sounds great,” said Neil.

 

\---

 

As he stretched beside the pool, Andrew realized he was very, very annoyed. And for once, it wasn’t by dive or Coach Robinson or any of his dumb teammates—no, Andrew was annoyed by himself, and he was annoyed by the fact that he was annoyed, because he had survived pretty well on shoving his feelings down deep where not even he could reach them.

And all because of fucking  _ Josten,  _ who was apparently as stupid as he was pretty.

Andrew rolled up his yoga mat, shoved it into the dive closet beside the locker rooms, and climbed onto the board; he hopped once, twice before falling pencil-straight into the water below. He was still annoyed.

“Doe!” Coach called when Andrew resurfaced, blinking the chlorine from his eyes. “Gimme three more dives, then go get some coffee or something. You look real out of it, kiddo.”

“Two, and you’ve got a deal,” replied Andrew.

Robinson rolled his eyes. “Fine. Good ones, though.”

Andrew went through his final warmup dives like clockwork before toweling off and yanking on a sweatshirt. (He had never gotten used to the cold of the pool, or the chill that sank deep into his bones afterwards. He’d just learned to pack lots of clothes in preparation for it.) Running a hand through his hair in an attempt to tame it again, Andrew pulled his wallet and keys from his bag and headed outside for the parking lot.

“Hi,” said Neil, appearing beside Andrew and almost instantly matching his stride. “Again.”

“You’re like a fatal disease,” Andrew remarked, even though his heart skipped a beat or twelve when he realized who he was talking to. “I can’t seem to get rid of you.”

Neil held up his own wallet. His eyes were very blue. “I heard Coach tell you to go get coffee. I want some too; can you give me a ride? I’ll pay for yours in exchange.”

“Are you trying to buy my friendship, Josten?”

“There’s a reason why prostitution rhymes with Constitution, Doe.”

Andrew snorted and instantly wanted to throw himself under a bus. “And why is that?”

“Uh,” said Neil, cheeks flushing. “I don’t know where I was going with that. I didn’t think you were even going to respond to the joke, to be honest.”

“You’re a mess,” Andrew observed.

Neil hummed in response, then said, “What kind of coffee do you drink?”

“Cupcake frappuccino,” said Andrew, entirely serious. “Two shots of caramel, one shot of vanilla. And since we’re going to Starbucks, a cake pop, too.”

Neil laughed, actually  _ laughed,  _ and Andrew felt something warm and bubbly come to life in his chest. “I never would have guessed that,” Neil admitted.

“What do you drink, then?” Andrew asked as they came up to his car.

“I like tea,” Neil said. “English breakfast or chamomile. Sometimes chai, when I’m feeling adventurous. Earl Grey can go fuck itself, though.”

“So you’re a pretentious prick, is what you’re telling me,” Andrew said, unlocking the car and sliding into the driver’s seat.

“And you’re a student athlete with a sugar addiction,” Neil shot back, once he was settled on the passenger’s side. “I don’t think either of us are in a position to judge the other.”

He was even better than Andrew had imagined. Andrew hated him. “I’m not a student athlete,” Andrew said instead.

“You’re a diver,” said Neil slowly. “On a high school team.”

“Yes,” Andrew said, starting the car and pulling out of the parking lot. “But being a student athlete requires a specific kind of mindset. I’m a student, and I’m an athlete, but I’m not a student athlete. I don’t use emojis, first of all, and secondly, I’ve never used the word grind as a noun.”

“Fair point,” Neil conceded, pulling his legs up to sit criss-cross applesauce; Andrew realized Neil wasn’t wearing shoes and, for some reason, Andrew was okay with that, even though this car was his pride and joy and he kept it as clean as humanly possible.

He wasn’t going to tell Neil that, though, so he just kept driving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they TALKED!!! also neil is VALID for hating earl grey!!! also andrew is that one b99 "he's so stupid i can't believe im gonna sleep with him" quote tbfh  
> leave me comments/kudos if ur feelin it babes!!!  
> 


End file.
